23 Feb The One Thing You Must Do Before You Start Writing Your Book

My simple goal in life is to help as many of you as possible to build businesses that give you freedom.

Usually, we do that by helping you create digital businesses.
So why are we talking about books?

Well, books are an integral part of my personal business mix. They’ve opened so many doors for me, it’s incredible.

Now, I happen to know that many people like you are thinking about writing your own books.

But I also know that many of you haven’t even started writing yet, because you’re too busy building an online course or simply running your business/life day-to-day.
What you may not realise is that the content you write for an online course could also be re-purposed into a book.

If you’re creating a course, or even writing a blog regularly, you may already have the content you need to create a great book.

But let’s get to my main question:

What is the single most important thing you need to do before you start writing a book?

I want to talk you through what it takes to get a publishing deal, what it takes to write a book, and what you need to do before you actually get started.
The number one thing you need to do, like everything else, is to get focused on building a tribe of buyers before you’ve even written the book.

It may seem incredibly simple but unless you actively engage in the growth of your community, your book is set to be a flop.

How do you do this?
You can start by sharing your best content for free.

Don’t freak out.

I promise you, this is the absolute foundation. That’s how you start to get an engaged group of people around you. That’s how you start to build your tribe of buyers.

Many people, upon hearing ‘share your best content for free’ tend to ask a pertinent question:

‘If I give my best stuff away for free, what do I have left to sell?‘

The fact is, you can still sell those same insights (or your ‘best stuff’) as part of your course.

On your blog or in your Facebook posts, you might cover the overall strategy of your best stuff, but not go into loads of detail.

Then when it comes to what you’re selling, you can sell the same insights, but this time go into real detail and give people supporting materials that help them get the same results that you do.

In this case, the insights or ‘best stuff’ hasn’t changed. You’ve just gone into it in a more detail and helped them get a result in the paid version.

While I think of it, you could also sell the actual implementation of those insights.

You might have the ability to offer a ‘done for you’ service, where you get the result for your clients on their behalf. If so, then you can give away all the knowledge, knowing that they will come back to you to actually get the job done.

Where can you share this ‘best stuff’?

Well, if you’re not already blogging, I suggest you start doing this right now.

You want to make sure you’re putting something out there once per week.

You might be thinking ‘Shaa, I haven’t got the time to write a book and a blog’. But you don’t need to do the two things independently of each other.
What I want you to put in your blog is exactly what you’ll put in your book.

I’m all about re-purposing my content.

Think about it this way: whatever the topic or subject you’re going to cover in your book, that’s what you want to start building your tribe around, because that’s your area of expertise, so…

Start writing your content and give away your best stuff for free

Now of course, your blogs aren’t going to be long enough.

Even if you strung eight of them together, they’re not going to be long enough to create a whole book. But they will break down some of the hard work involved in writing a book.

Writing blogs is a great way to break the process down and make it easier for you to actually get the book writing done.
So what I did, and I think what all the smart people do, is I copied other people.

I don’t mean I copied their writing. Clearly I didn’t do that.

But I did think to myself “OK, what do I see in what other successful people have been doing? How did they do it? And how can I copy that so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel?”

There is someone out there right now who’s got a bestselling book.

There’s someone out there right now who has the relationship that you dream of.

There is someone out there right now who has the business you’ve always wanted.

So look at what they’re doing and think to yourself, “Why not you? Why not me? Why not all of us?”

Understand who you want to attract

When finding the right tribe for your book you need to ask yourself who you want to be your target audience.

To find the right people just be you. Be consistent. Let people understand what they’re buying into with you.
When you’re creating content for your blogs, for your book and your Facebook posts, keep it really authentic around the topic of the type of book that you want to write. Think all the time, “what kind of voice am I going to use?”

I’d suggest that you use the voice of the person you want to attract. Just write like you’re having a conversation with a friend.

Helping to get your book out there

When we’re thinking about how we start sharing content to build our tribe before writing our book, we can also look at how it helps with things like PR.

You can show people examples of your work and leverage it to reach out to journalists who you want to make connections with.

It will help you to demonstrate that you’ve got exactly the type of content that they’re looking for. In turn, you’ll get more exposure for your book and brand.

Let’s get on to some practical tips

If you’re thinking about writing a book, start with a blank piece of paper. When you’re looking at this blank piece of paper and you’re thinking to yourself, “What do I do? Where do I start?”

Start with a really great piece of advice from Tim Ferriss.

“Just write two crappy pieces per day.”
If you can write two crappy pages per day, re-purpose those two crappy pages, turn them into blogs, turn them into Facebook posts, start to build your tribe around you, and then utilise that to gain yourself some extra PR, it will all start to come together.

And those crappy posts will get better. Your writing will become more succinct and help people to get bigger and better results.

You have to set everything up for success

It’s like a row of dominoes: It takes a little bit of time, but when you’ve knocked the first one over you start seeing all the dominoes falling over one by one and everything starts to fall into place.
When we do anything and we’re trying to build our tribe, or we’re building our Facebook following, our Instagram following, or even just the number of people who buy our books or our courses, our instant feeling is we want as many people as possible.

And ultimately, to a degree, that’s true.

But the most important thing is finding the right tribe for you. They will be the early adopters and they will tell other people about you.

So, don’t focus on the big numbers. Instead, focus on sharing your content and finding those early adopters. They will form the core of your tribe.

Keep doing that process and before you know it, you’ll have a team of raving fans who are willing you to succeed (and who will buy your book, your course and anything else you want to publish!). 🙂